Tech

Hands On With Project Shield, Nvidia's Powerhouse Game Controller

Hands On With Project Shield

Nvidia Project Shield

Project Shield will be one of the first devices to pack Nvidia's Tegra 4 processor. Designed to be both a standalone Android gaming device as well as a bridge for your PC games, the Shield is due to launch in the spring.

Side View, Screen Open

Lid

Front View

Angle View

Side View, Screen Closed

Back View

Customizable Cover

In Hand

Game Mirroring

PC Link

Open and Closed

Top View

LAS VEGAS — One of the big surprises of CES 2013 was Project Shield, a handheld game controller that Nvidia unveiled in dramatic fashion earlier this week. We got a little hands-on time with a pre-production model of the device, which the company hopes to transform into a full-fledged gaming platform, while at the show.

The Shield certainly seems to have the goods to do what Nvidia promises. Powered by the just-officially-unveiled Tegra 4 processor, it ably handled some taxing Android games and relayed graphics-intensive PC games to an HDTV with just a couple of button pushes.

Picking it up for the first time, I could tell Project Shield was something special. It feels solid in the hand, although heavier than your average Xbox controller. Gameplay buttons are where you expect them, and the array in the middle, which includes the big button that toggles between Android and your PC/media hub, is clearly labeled.

When I flipped open the lid to reveal the 5-inch 720p touch screen, the display came on almost instantly. It's eye-poppingly bright and sharp, exactly what I'd expect from an OLED display. Gameplay screens look good, but for the kinds of games the Shield was made to play — graphics-intensive titles with lots of action — it feels a little small.

Good thing, then, that the Shield can mirror the action to a big screen easily, either via wired or wireless (dual band, 2x2 MIMO) connection. Nvidia only had a wired connection available, so naturally the game played flawlessly, with no lag that I could detect.

The real test was seeing how Project Shield handled moving PC content to a TV. Toggling to the PC/media gateway, I cued up Hawken. Here's where the Shield works as a kind of relay, starting up and then pulling the content from the PC and rendering it both on the Shield's screen and the TV. It's said to support resolutions up to 4K.

The linkup worked fine, although it required some creative button pushing to finish starting up the game. PC games don't all necessarily start in the same way, so Nvidia may need to polish this slightly before general release.

Once Hawken was running, however, everything was smooth. Shield seemed to relay every pixel of the graphics-intensive game with ease. It didn't even get warm.

Would it have if the graphics were 4K and I played for hours instead of minutes? Probably. But the fact that there's a device that can even move that many pixels among three devices, wired or wireless, is astonishing.

Based on my time with Project Shield, I think the gaming crowd will be pleased. It adds tactile controls to Android games and opens a whole new dimension to anything on a PC. And let's not forget that it's also a Jelly Bean-powered Android device, so you have email, web browsing and apps when you want them.

I think there's little question Project Shield will be on many gamers' wish lists when it becomes available (planned for the spring). The big question now is how much Nvidia will charge for it. You tell us: How much would you pay for Project Shield? Let us know in the comments.

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